You've seen these threads before, but I thought in light of tomorrow's release date we could briefly re-visit the topic.

RANK

1. LDoN -- In spite of the fact that I just started doing LDoN a few weeks ago, I think it's a terrific expansion with lots of challenges and good rewards.

2. Kunark -- I wasn't around for it's release, but Kunark content is some of my favorite in Norrath.

3. PoP -- This expansion improved exponentially when the dark blue range was increased. Despite all the headaches that came with it, the new zones and improved xp were long overdue.

4. Velious -- Again, I wasn't around for this release, but it added much-needed raid content and some nice zones.

5. Ykesha -- Probably the smallest expansion, only Nadox saves it from 6th place.

6. Luclin -- The zones and content were ok. The main problem was what it did to Druids. It was really the capstone of a downward spiral for the class which was partially remedied with iCH and later PoP.

I'd be interested in others' takes.

Kunark, Velious, PoP, Luclin. I never really played in Ykesha and stopped playing before LDoN.

PoP, Velious, Kunark, LDoN, Luclin...

You gotta give Luclin kudos as it had free ports (granted PoP is better), the bazaar and Shadowhaven (pre-PoP, the place to do tradeskills and still where I do a lot of mine because it's now so empty).

Oh and Paludal Caverns, one of the best teen-to-30 twink zone ever.

But I think for content, creativity, dungeons - Kunark > all.

I stopped around the Yak expansion - complete burn out had taken over by then. I popped on now and then, but never really fully explored LDON.

My favorite had to be Velious, followed closely by Kunark.

Kunark was just cool because it had everything - new levels, a new race, and tons of new content - from 1-60. The only real downside to Kunark was the fact that Seb was your only real "high end" zone (you can't really count Veeshan's Peak back then) so Seb was always freaking crowded. However, the items that dropped from Seb were just plain godly... all you could do was drool at the 750pt crits. Plus, who could forget the introduction of epics shortly after Kunark's release? Everyone agrees that many are much harder/lamer than others, but still, even now, most classes want their epic - either because of their usefulness, or just because of the "I did it!" factor.

Velious was my favorite just because of my personal experience. In the original and Kunark releases, I was part of a "friends' guild," but Velious was when I jumped up into an "uber guild". Velious was just so well done - so many high end dungeons, the faction split to keep guilds away from each other, and the items were very well balanced - for all levels 35-60. Until someone woke the Sleeper, the upper guilds were usually pretty well split between Yelinak/Tormax, Sleepers, and WTOV/NTOV making "farm camps" a little less common than with other expansions.

Kunark, Velious, PoP, LDoN, Ykesha, Luclin.

Everything about Luclin was horrible, the horrid time sinks of bane weapons and VT keys, the horrible luclin model animations, the huge newbie zones that were useless, the huge empty cities. A single boss mob bottleneck for utter chaotic guild cawkblocking.

They took the VP key and the ST key... added the tedium of the VP key, with 1/5 the boss content of the ST key and left you with a huge time sink.


It would have been 100 times more interesting if the moon was a barren wasteland devoid of vegitation and filled with crazy abominations. Instead we got a magical mushroom kingdom filled with half-man half-apes, and those aliens from the movie Mars Attack. The lore was horrible too... o wizards just found the way to the moon yay. Why couldn't gnomes have built a rocketship or something instead.


Ykesha i rank > Luclin only because of the bank space heh.

kunark: the dungeons omg yes
velious: the quests are very well done, and you have a whole lotta freaking DRAGONS
planes of power: love and hate relationship with the flag system, but the feeling i got when my guild finally became elemental flagged, or beat general reparm the first time, etc, cannot be beat in all of my eq experiences
luclin: lotta nice outdoor zones, and some decent indoor ones as well, but its sho shmall compared to velious.
loy: nice style, fairly well designed zones, but not enough, and its in a really out of the way place, as a druid that doesnt bother me but on alts /shudder running all the way there every time
ldon: gets really boring unless you are doing hard mode, easy puts me to sleep with a good group, just not much to it all, once youve done one theme's zone, youve done them all.

My all time favorite expansion was Kunark. At the time it was just incredible and to this day the Kunark dungeons are my favorite.

Next I suppose LDoN for the concept though I wasn't terribly impressed with the dungeons and the cookie cutter approach. However, even when I stopped playing EQ, I was still enjoying LDoN.

Next would be PoP. There were parts of PoP I thought were really great and parts I thought were the worst thing I'd ever seen.

Luclin didn't do a lot for me. Lots of interesting concepts but so many dungeons that just weren't really well tuned to groups. The reward/risk of the dungeons seemed really askew compared to the loot you could get relatively easily in open areas, like UP and ME.

Velious I have mixed feelings about. I liked it better later on when you could take a smaller raid force, or even a group, into TOV. But I didn't spend much time in any of the xp zones because Kunark was just better. The faction thing was too much. I did end up enjoying Sleeper's Tomb. And I even like NToV for the first few visits.

LoY: I heard this was an expansion too. To me it was Dye and Maps. :p

From an uber-casual point of view (meaning very casual, not a combination of uber and casual hehe)

1. Kunark - owned. Loved exploring Kunark and levelling up there, the EQ lore seemed to make some kind of sense at the time and it seemed a natural progression.

2. Velious - also very good, again some exciting zones... introduced the short-lived velious armor patterns, I'd say this expansion was the height of EQ fashion :p

3. LDON - finally added some convenience and stucture to groups/raids, instanced zones own pure and simple... no fighting with other groups for the right to kill specific mobs.

4. PoP - The Books! Very sweet indeed. Other than that, no use other than raiding.

5. Luclin - Added the bazaar... convenient, but is it really necessary to have everyone standing there AFK causing uber-lag? Did SOE really believe people would stay at the keyboard? Added the kitty race. Destroyed all individuality/fashion (and framerates) by using a new (crap) character model system.

6. LoY - Frogs. Whooptidoo. The point of this expansion was....?

6. LoY - Frogs. Whooptidoo. The point of this expansion was....?
LoY: I heard this was an expansion too. To me it was Dye and Maps. :p
and bank space.../nod

I'm surprised at you guys not acknowledging what Luclin did for ports - we didn't have to port anymore?! "Go take the spires".

And the communal meeting space of the nexus and the bazaar...then the bazaar itself. Changed the economy COMPLETELY.

I'm a dungeon addict myself. To me, any expansion with good dungeons to crawl, good loot, good exp, challenging single group action is fun. Even when you mudflate out of a dungeon and it isn't challenging any longer, you can still go back and relive the fun by yourself, with a bot, a pet or a good friend.

I know it wasnt an expansion but when they bought in epics I thought it was pretty cool.

My favourite expansion was Velious. Loved the factions, the stories, the quests. Kael and Skyshrine are still amongst my favourite zones. LoY is a close second for the utility reasons mentioned above. Luclin is my least favourite expansion. PoP caused me to stop playing for 8 months but I am *slowly* coming to like the variety of encounters it provides.

Velious, Loy, Kunark, PoP, Ldon, Luclin.

Velious hands down was the best handcrafted expansion to eq.
Had great artwork, storyline, quests and monsters.(dragons rule!)

Legacy of yekesha is an excellent expansion cept for it should have been free since its so small.

Kunark honestly is the greatest expansion in that it had the biggest impact on the game and made it much bigger with more levels.

I simply rated it so low because of the way they handled faction and travel as well as class armor. All big disapointments to me at the time and part of the then infamous
VISION tm.


PoP is an excellent expansion also and you can relly see the effort they put into it.
That being said, POP broke the game. I'll leave it to you to discuss how.

Ldon was an interesting expansion, i liked it but didn't really use it after the first month.I wish it had been a feature in the game from day one on a limited basis. Would have really helped out the casuals.

Luclin was hands down the worst expansion. Worst idea. Worst zones. half assed storyline that actually had great potential.

I also want to vote Mons letis as the most useless zone in game.

im rather surprised most of the casuals in this thread rated LoY so low, as it was completely a casual expansion, altho i imagine most of you that bash it never spent any real time there. ive spent a significant amount of time there, and altho its not been all that productive, ive had my fun.

LoY was geared to the 45-55 crowd. That could be the reason.

RANK

1. Kunark -- I started just after it launched but it seems to me to still be the only expansion that got it all right - good backstory, good zones, content for all levels, raid content, experience content, good dungeons, new starting race. Was there a new class too? I don't really know but at any rate, this was the best of the best.

2. Luclin -- In spite of feeling very rushed out the door and incomplete, this expansion seemed to best capture what I liked about Kunark. A decent story, a good mix of zones, GREAT raid content (the best ever). EDIT - let me qualify that - OTHER than VT. VT bosses were stupid...but I loved all the other Luclin raid fights I did - good mix, creative use of challenging issues. Would have been the best if there were not so many loose strings (where in the heck is the zone with Luclin herself in it? Where does the big door in the shadowhaven casters guild go to? Why aren't the akhevans more fleshed out?) Also, the horrific keying quests and baning effort. Plus side you felt you really earned the right to be in VT (and the number of keyed zones was limited enough to not affect most players). Big minus was that keying and baning broke the wills of many players/guilds. Introduction of the AA system was a HUGE plus and reinvented the game fora lot of players - good creative thinking there, and a worthwhile system. First efforts to streamline travel for players.

3. Velious -- did a lot right. Good zones. Lots of dragons to slay (which is a good thing). A few things I really hated - the faction game was more headache than fun, but I will grant it was the best (and really only) time that faction was really well implemented in the game. STill too much contrived "hard to get there from here" stuff built in at the outset. The teeth in the rings. The effort required to reach WW. Still, at least it was not raid flagged. The biggest flaw I feel was the Sleeper story line. A big mistake to do one time content that made the world worse for everyone (even if it was just a theoretical loss of drops for a given player).

4. LDoN -- Good zone designs, but it ultimately felt lifeless to me. The whole adventure points system seemed highly contrived and arbitary. It seemed to be a shorthand, uncreative effort in terms of itemization. Quickly boiled down to a highly repetitive exercise for min/maxers ("no keep trying until you get a genocide one...").

5. POP -- So strange. I loved it at first. But this expansion ruined the game for me. I simply didn't enjoy the progression of the game since it was like working in a progression factory. The need to beat the next monster in the progression robbed the current victory of most of its flavor, and the endless repetition of fights even if your guild saw no value in the loot was maddening. Then the payout for reaching elementals was a lot of flavorless, meaningless encounters with named mobs that had absolutely no story to them. I have never, ever felt so much on a treadmill in EQ as I did in POP and I simply found over time I no longer cared where I was going because it was feeling like watching an animated display on a staionary bike. It vaguelly looked like things changed, but it was really always a stationary bike. Server kill tracking lists - did they even exist before POP? This expansion made cockblocking an artform, since everything you ever wanted to do involved a) getting into a zone and b) worrying about other people competing with you in the zone. Other odd thing - tradeskill gear tied to raid progression, when recently they had seemed to try to make tradeskill gear alternative to raid progression. Oh yah...special mention of parchment turn ins for spells as the WORST SPELL DISTRIBUTION EVER.

6. Ykesha -- Can you really call that an expansion? Hugely dissappointing. Cool zone designs that had absolutely no value to most players. Crappy itemization. Disappointing and pointless charms. Only plus was the bank slots, and maybe dye.

im rather surprised most of the casuals in this thread rated LoY so low, as it was completely a casual expansion, altho i imagine most of you that bash it never spent any real time there.
It was fairly well-made, but small and targeted to the tiny 35-55 segment of the player base. I explored every dungeon just to see it. The loot was quite good but the NPCs had a lot of hit points for their level, making it a poor XP spot. Thus, LoY went mostly unnoticed.

and bank space.../nod

I'm surprised at you guys not acknowledging what Luclin did for ports - we didn't have to port anymore?! "Go take the spires".

And the communal meeting space of the nexus and the bazaar...then the bazaar itself. Changed the economy COMPLETELY.

The lack of druid ports to Luclin, combined with the lack of healing update, and some other sundry items, almost killed the Druid class...So, yes, when we list it dead ****ing last, we're acknowledging it.

It was fairly well-made, but small and targeted to the tiny 35-55 segment of the player base. I explored every dungeon just to see it. The loot was quite good but the NPCs had a lot of hit points for their level, making it a poor XP spot. Thus, LoY went mostly unnotice

There is some nice loot that drops in a lot of the LoY boss fights which is nice. Most of them do not require a major undertaking. I am always suprised there are not more folks in there.

I can tell you in the last week with either my Mage or My Druid I have played in Drogga, Veksar, Velks, Valor, Storms, BoT, The Hole, Nadox, Torrigan, Dulak, Griegs, PoH... And that is jsut the past 7 days. I really like somethign about all of the expansion. Kunark content is pretty tired by now, but revamped and new zones are nice.

Kunark - ANIMALS!!, quested keys and spells for those that liked quests. Good dungeons but plenty of outdoor areas and some outdoor dungeons. Too many trains and bad pathing. Quad Kiting was invented then nerfed (mobs wandered off at low hps). A set of clicky effect armor for each class. The impossible Druid Epic with Fay spawning mid ocean and running to her death. Increased max level. New Race and new hunting zones. I would give it an A- to B+.

Velious - Faction and Gates meant linear progression. Drops to 10k deaths and unpredictable mobs that could long range agro or suddenly appear. Good spread of mobs but scattered summoners, mez/stun/snare/root proof and hard hitters with a lot of undercons. (like green turtles that can wipe a full group of 60's). Strange zones that played with the geometry. Extreemly rare druid drops and silk drops. A plane of our own to go for a nice peaceful chat with Tunare. They fixed Quadkiting from previous nerf. The faction setup made hunting in some zones safer since not all of the mobs hated you. Hard to get key for zones for the Ubers to hunt but they were broken. Rare drop spells with more common drops of gate spells you could buy. New skill recipies and quests that used trade skills with progression. This started out as a C- but then they fixed some zones, increased spell drops and opened the gates and some keys to make travel easier. They did some non-nerf patchs that fixed things for a change. Made this a B expansion.

Luchin - Gates for the non-Gaters, new skills and races. New Class. Faction and Ring quests. Some nice items both from quests and skills. Impossible spells to get and Ancient spells. Snareproof/root proof/summoning common mobs. Even more popup mobs. Overall, not my favorate expansion and would only give it a C if it wasn't for the Bazaar, horses and the Nexus. So a B-. For the tanks I believe it was an A- due to their ability to solo the snareproof mobs.

LoY - Ugg.. frogs and undercon'ed mobs with too many hp that hit too hard. Redeeming factors: expanded bank, lizzard mounts, charms (?) and dyes. hard to even give this expansion a C.

PoP - even more gates for non-gaters. increased max level. New zones and mobs for the uber crowd. An Ubers playground. For Ubers an A+ for casual and non-ubers a C just because it expanded gating and skills.

LDoN - Pocket dungeons with purchasable augments to upgrade your gear. That alone gives it an A. Anything that allows casual gamers to group and get exp plus good loot is a good thing. For the Ubers it allows them to make their PoTime gear even more uber. Overall good idea and would have gotten an A+ except for the amount of adventuring needed to get items.

Velious - Did everything right. Lots of content and a cool story.
Kunark - Close 2nd. *Love* the dungeons, they just cant seem to make em like that anymore. It was really hard for druids though until superheal was moved down some levels.
PoP - Distant 3rd. Lotta problems. Turned out ok in the end but it still took them 10 months+ to fix the issues we all had solutions for a week after release.
LoY - Bank space. Dyes can go to hell.
Luclin - Holy hell this was a terrible expansion. Unfinished, buggy, terrible balance, half hour fights, and OMG the time sinks. Just horrible.

Yep pretty much agree with Tiane.

LDoN was a pile of dog poo poo though and the main reason I dont play EQ at the moment.


Tils

Velious
Kunark
PoP
....

....

...

Luclin

The rest don't even deserve and honorable mention.

1) Kunark - I wasnt around for the launch, but when I did start playing between Kunark and Velious expansions, Kunark was by far and still is my favorite place to hunt. It also has some of the best places to PL your friends :cool:

2) Velious - I didn't really get to enjoy this expansion until later on when most of the 'uber' guilds were gone, but it is still a fun place. Shawl crawl, dragons, and ToV raids are big +'s here

3) LoY - Basically a way for SOE to make you pay for a few in game tools by adding some more useless junk and call it an expansion, but its a nice place to mess around in on a rainy day.

4) Luclin - Time sinks here are horrible. Raid time here can take an ungodly amount of time and the graphics really disappointed me, nice to look at but too demanding on the CP.

5) LDoN - This is one of the worst expansions IMO. Puzzle piece zones and and 30 minute dungeons just dont interest me. Every time you try to get a pick up group here it is usually filled with newbies and/or ebay characters. Also the fact that LFG for these is horrible considering the only ones anybody goes to anymore is the one in BB and the occasional North Ro.

6) PoP - Some love this expansion, I hate it. This expansion basically shot all the casual players in the head. The fact that the mobs used for flaggings are rarely up and when they are they are always raced to just ruins the fun in the game for me.

RANK

1. LDoN -- Genuinely new content idea. Put achievement back into the hands of players and not their guilds, powerlevelers, and pp merchants. Challenging dungeons are sheer good fun too. Nothing beats winning in the last minute. Also remarkably bug free.

2. Velious -- I was just about the right level to experience all the content when it came out. The zones were nice and had a feeling of progression. TOFS is my favourite zone ever. The quests were good too, especially the ones with the funny dwarves.

3. Kunark -- This had some good ideas and some bad. The zone designs seem to have moved on very little from Antonica in reterospect. Epics were really good but took a lot of tinkering to get to a fit state.

4. PoP -- Ambitious but badly implemented. It needed much more user testing or common sense applied. Flagging is great, backflagging is not. All the tier 1-3 boss events are full of great ideas, although I haven't seen the worse sounding elemental/time ones.

5. Ykesha -- Really nice zones but stupidly placed and desparately short of playable content.

6. Luclin -- The bazaar was good, but really always creaked at the edges. The portals were good but are redundant with the PoK books. Paludal caverns cannot be forgiven. Mons Letalis must be the most pointless zone in EQ. The twilight armour quests are a complete waste of design effort and zones. The new models are laggy and ugly. I play with nearly all of them off. Sitting on horses to meditate must be as stupid a concept as they come. The length of time to clear a cycle in VT cannot be forgiven by any casual gamer. There's good points too but I seem to have talked enough about Luclin already :).

1) Velious - Great content for all levels, lots of interesting nooks and crannies to explore. Loads of great quests like Coldain shawl, Coldain ring, Spirit of Garzicor. Kudos go to whoever designed the 10th ring war, to me that is still the best raid encounter ever.

2) Kunark - Close second position for the much same reasons as Velious. I just happen to prefer Velious content because its content matched my levels at that point in time. However Seb is still the definitive dungeon experience to me.

3) PoP - Not so good for casual players. Good for raiding guilds because of its interesting and varied raid encounters. Although some zones like Tactics, Torment, Earth, Air puts me to sleep due to boring and repeatitive zone design.

4) Luclin - Is it me or does it seem like the art of zone design was lost just prior to the release of Luclin? The architecture and looks of some zones are great, but there's just a lack of interesting spots in every zone. For example, Wakening Lands in Velious has Wuoshi prowling around the dragon circle, camps of giant labourers, a Sifane village, ruins with sentient armor, a small lake with a tower at its center, the holgresh cavern. Compared with Luclin zones, I have to combine Dawnshroud Peaks, Maiden's Eye and Umbral Plains just to find as many interesting places.

5) LoY - Even though I bought this, I have not really played in LoY. I think I mainly got it for the extra bank space and the mapping feature. Both these functions should have been given to players as a free upgrade during a patch (like the new tradeskill UI) rather than with a new expansion.

6) LDoN - Zero quests, every zone is boring and repeatitive, spell downgrades rather than upgrades. The only saving grace is that casual players have a chance at good gear. All in all, its an expansion not worth getting.

1) Planes of Power, I love the level cap addition, the AA, the experience is nice, I really enjoy the look of a lot of the zones, the raids are enjoyable, and the loot is fun. PoK is a wonderful place for various things too. The story could have been a lot better though, but that's for all of EQ..it has a good story, but the implimentation is poor.

2) LDoN, I like the idea of augments, and being able to 40 hp augment a lot of stuff or add a 150 DD to it is fun, being able to have an instanced zone is great, but the time limit/group resistrictions were a downside, but overall a well done expansion, and added some more porting ability =-p [Edit: I have no thoughts on the spells we got in this expansion, except to say I have no desire to get them, and probably will never bother]

3) Velious, the look of the zone, the three different factions, the Shawl/Ring quests, were all nice, the three factions could be a pain sometimes, but overall it was kinda nice. Just sucked not gating/camping fast enough on a dain kill or two and tanking my faction =-(

4) Kunark, I really only truly enjoyed a few zones in this expansion, Charasis, Sebilis, and Chardok I suppose.

5) Luclin, had some neat little things in it, and the raid content was welcome, and I LOVED the AAs, even if it took forever to get them and I super super slacked then, but overall it felt like a bland expansion.

6) LoY, I only really enjoyed the new client features in this, more then the zones itself. Perhaps if I weren't 65 long before it came out, I would have enjoyed it more. But even on my alts, it's just kinda so-so.

velious, kunark, luclin, pop.

loy and ldon were not even expansions.

velious because it had everything you wanted. the playerbase was getting more experienced and needed a 30+ expansion, and they delivered quite well.

kunark was great, and necessary at it's time. perhaps it's time to revisit kunark like they have some old world zones.

luclin was another has-everything type expansion, but was somewhat poor for it's progression. the keys were a bitch, and there was little non-raid content that was just for fun.

pop... again, keys (flags) and no semblance of stories outside of the raid content.

let me reiterate.... ldon and loy weren't even expansions. they're fluff. and we all know how the cackler feels about fluff.

/cackle

I went to Ykesha briefly... after a hairy journey to the mob area (everything seems to see invis, and there are things in/around the water) it looked incredibly dangerous as everything is close together and nobody hunts there. Basically that was all I bothered with it... other zones seemed much safer. Granted I was looking to solo at the time though.

I didn't see Luclin as such a huge difference in transport, as there was only 1 spire per continent. "Go take the spire" was usually met with "Aww, but I want to go from North Karana to Freeport" or "Aww, but I'd have to wait 15 minutes for each part of the journey". PoP was the true transport revolution :)

Kunark however (or was it Velious?) had the nice firepots before either of them... if you were a casting class fortunate enough to bind there and survive - easier later on when the dragon was heavily hunted - you could basically get anywhere rather quickly.

Kunark, Velious, LDoN, PoP, Ykesha, Luclin.

1. Kunark - Started a month or so before it's release, kunark just completely owned eq. One of my funniest memories is being on the ridge in DL the first time Gore swooped down and cleared the ridge because someone unknowingly was in wolfform. Good stuff! =p

2. Velious - Was just a guilds dream. 3 different factions, kept guilds well seperated for a long while. Made life on servers much more cross guild friendly. Dragons Dragons and more Dragons, the things any good rpg is made of. Lots of places to explore, great outside zones, great quests, great story lines with lots of Dragons, oh ya and dragons! ;)

3. Ldon - Great single group expansion. Really pulled me back into eq, even after the charm was done. Raids sucked, only downfall. Instanced zones, yes!

4. PoP - omg, flagage sucked no doubt, even worse when you are on a server with guilds raiding 6+ hrs ahead of you and blocking your progress. But tons of new targets, mega new gear, some really nice looking zones, pok (good and bad - we no longer had to run around porting half the guild but in same instance it made us even more undesirable as a class with nothing to replace it).

5. Ykesha - Only there a few times, nothing much for the 60+ mostly non-alt playing eq'er. Had it not been for pureblood quest probably wouldn't have ever been there again after the looksie trip. More bankspace, yay (this should have been a free update though). /rude sony

6. Luclin - Aliens, Black Robe wearing ghosts, and snakes wearing gold, just dumb. Really gotta wonder if the game designers on this one ever played an rpg, where were the dragons? Time sinks took an all time high or low (and we thought vp key was bad?). They were just rediculously horrible. AA's rocked have to give them that, each class could finally start specializing somewhat with their peticular playstyle.

let me reiterate.... ldon and loy weren't even expansions. they're fluff. and we all know how the cackler feels about fluff.
LDoN is only fluff if you're (a) uber and (b) too inflexible to do the raids. I've even seen ubers who complained about LDoN being too easy yet they were farming normals!

For the majority of the player base, LDoN was a godsend. You can advance without requiring huge blocks of time, get great XP and points towards loot at the same time, all in instanced dungeons when you don't have to worry about camping. As far as I've seen, LDoN is still the prime spot non-raiders are going now, with a minority going to PoP for XP (usually exploiting in Tactics or going to elemental planes). Even the ubers go to LDoN for XP because the hards match the XP level of the elemental planes while offering so much more. LDoN is also great XP for the lower level crowd.

If SoE now polled the entire player base (not just a few on the druid's grove, where ubers are overwhelmingly overrepresented), I wouldn't be surprised if LDoN ended up ranking as the #1 expansion. The only reason I wouldn't rank it as #1 is that it doesn't have the depth or variety of Kunark or Velious.

You can advance without requiring huge blocks of time

I don't know about you, but it usually takes at least an hour just to find an ldon group, then another half hour to get everybody there, 20 minutes to enter the dungeon, then 30 minutes - 1 hour to complete the dungeon, then about 15 minutes to finish up. That to me is a huge block of time when I can go duo in tactics and get 5x the xp I would in that single dungeon in less than half the time.

/agree Tudamorf

I sort of look at LDoN as several simultaneous on-going quests where I don't have to farm greenies to get good gear. I get to have fun, group with some folks, practice new or different tactics and get the adrenaline pumping (doing a hard). All this while I earn points to get nice augments that I may not ever get from raid content or DKP. While I wish we didn't have to earn points for our spells, I do like the variety of the dungeons and the reasonable loot drops as well as xp and cash are a nice bonus. In short, I can do 1-2 LDoN encounters in an evening and feel like I made some real progress while having fun at the same time.

As to LDoN overhead, I actually find it less cumbersome than any other expansion, especially if you have a group of friends you routinely adventure with in which case you can churn through things much faster becuase you get into a good groove with them. Pick-up groups are a crapshoot in any context, but for casual guilds or even casual individualis LDoN has a lot to offer IMO.

Velious, Kunark, LoY, Luclin, PoP, LDoN

Velious I just loved I dont know why but I have a thing for snow and CC remains my favourite zone to this day.

Kunark was great although I started playing with this expansion so it felt like original EQ to me :)

LoY was great for druids imo, a really fun place to explore + more bank space is uber for the hardcore tradeskiller I was.

Luclin wasnt to bad. Had fun exploring the moon and dieing a lot whilst doing it. The zone design on many zones here wasnt half bad although some of them stank.

PoP ruined the raiding game for me I think. Raiding PoP content became very boring very quickly and I knew after killing TZ/VZ for the 50th time that I wouldnt be bothering with Eplanes.

LDoN while the concept was good the dungeon design was just to boring to keep my interest long. Probably not helped by the fact that I was tiring of the game by this point.

Kunark
Velious
LDoN
PoP
Luclin
LoY

I find it interesting that people either rate LDoN as one of hte highest or one of the lowest. To me that is the sign of a well targeted expansion. It was designed for casual players, who typically love it, and not designed for raiders who typically hate it. So it seems to me that it hit its mark *comfort raides*

Most people rank Luclin and LoY LOW - which to me seems to be the mark failed expansions. As much as some of you loath LDoN, many think it has been a great success. Me being one of them.

Quote:

P.S. I have a question about expansions. Why does it seem like SOE has broken it down to either raid or casual? Why can't it be both?


My own view on that is that POP set them teetering. Up until POP, every expansion was "something for everyone." Then they designed POP to really inject something for the end game player. I don't think they had any real clue just how divisive that would be. It broke wide a lot of simmering issues in the player base. Before POP you would really NOT hear uber v casual debates every day. Sure, when whatever guild on your server woke the sleeper a bunch of people who would never have reached it (at the time) complained about the uber guild on their server. But there was not the same fierce battle for developer attention.

POP was a screw up in my opinion. They could have done many things that would have allowed the raid content without making it feel that it was an expansion "for" raiders. The keyed zones were a gross error. The nerfing on spell scroll drop rates in Tier 2 after the ubers had gotten all their spells was an error. They just seemed to keep making the situation worse rather than better.

So in reaction they come out with a "casual" expansion - really better to think of it as an experience group expansion since people at all raid levels can do it. But then you have aging raid content and now they are having a raid expansion again.

I really do think they need a Luclin/Kunark/Velious style expansion to get them back on track, but I also think they are much more expensive and complicated to build so I wonder if they will ever do one that way again.

If current trends are any indications, the next bit will be either an extension like LOY or an experience group expansion like LDON.

For my-self

1- Velious, all for everyone, the factions have a real maining in Velious. And for the graphic how to do better with less. The Tower of Frozen shadow and Cristal cavern are 2 of the best of best zone in my list. The incremential quest is a very good idea.

2- LoY, I have done the level 58-65 in LoY, a lot of mini event, named poping after killing a normal mob, good itemisation for the difficulty of the mob. Fun to finaly be able to go to a pirates island. But I have to admit that now I am level 65, I don't have much to do in LoY. Also helped to be able to port very near of it.

3- LDoN, love it and pick-up group have returned to EQ (for the better and the worse).

4- Kunark, fun, good donjon, epic, new zone to explore. But a pain to explore at level 24.

5- PoP, new level, but a guild made of a mixt of player style killer. and the limit on the xp range and the zone you where able to go have made me to rest a long time at level 60.

6- Luclin, outside of the nexus and the bazaar, almost never see a raison to go here (and the story of Luclin is a lot better explained in the book on Luckin from the pen and paper RPG version). I have get it for the AAXP.


Eridalafar

Velious-Just love the story, quests and the zones, definitely my favorite expansion except for the snow :P

LDoN-This expansion brought me back to the game (I took about a four month break), suddenly I could group again, get good exp, decent cash, a chance at decent loot dropping occasionally and racking up points for better stuff. Also, a move away from PoP groups where if you don't have X class(es) you may as well forget grouping. For me, a 57 druid at the time, this expansion was perfect and while the zones are repetitive, for me the fun is seeing what kind of crazy group make-up I can try this time. Love making my own groups and typically I form a group in about 5-15 minutes because there is so much flexibility in making a group :)

Luclin/Kunark/PoP are all about the same for me, some things I really like and some things I really dislike, but all decent expansions IMO.

LoY-I don't know what it is about this one, but I just don't like the zones at all. The mobs hit too hard, resist too much, and break root too often for me anyway, but I know some folks like it so to each her/his own. I liked the additional bank space :P Perhaps if I had been ~45 when it came out, I would have enjoyed it more.

I agree with Autumn, I think this ranking is very determined by when you started/what level of the game you were when each expansion came out. Personally, I started shortly after Velious, was still low when Luclin came out, quit and swtiched servers a few times, came back from a break around PoP, and have climbed levels with the last two. So...

LoY - this always felt like my own personal expansion, since everyone else ignored and badmouthed it. Since I was still low level, the zones were actually legitimate hunting spots, with quests, tradeskills, UI enhancements, and such that made it fun. I can understand why this would be ignored if you were already 65, but for me it was fun. Plus, it seemed to be the first time an expansion didn't break the game.

Velious and Kunark - I can't really distinguish these from the original game, since I started afterwards. I appreciate the faction and quest aspects of Velious, and have enjoyed the zones immensely. Kunark is the site of LoIO, so enough said on that. =p

Luclin - this was the first expansion I witnessed playing EQ. As such, it's hard to detach myself from the awe of exploring a new continent (celestial body) and learning new bits of lore. Now, in hindsight, I recognize a lot of flaws regarding class balance, game mechanics, etc. But, it gets bonus points just from the fond memories.

LDoN - A good concept, but kind of repetitive. Would it have killed them to have an outdoor theme? The Twister Beholder's Maze? Start in WK or something, to bring a few more people to that side of the world?

<way, way, way down>

PoP - it just feels like it was poorly conceived, poorly implemented, and poorly managed. The issues have been raised many times, but it really seemed to create a caste system in EQ.

Agree, anyone that came along long after Kunark came out won't have a clue what an amazing leap it was from original EQ.

One of my best memories from Kunark was the first time I was in FVie and saw the BOAT come to dock. Someone did a /shout across the zone of something like this:
"THAT'S the "good boat"??? Man, ogres got JIPPED!!"

That boat was awesome :D

I was one of the few that enjoyed sailing from time to time.... admittedly it got old, but it was a shame to see the old-world boats removed from the game altogether.

While boats were always in game for me, I did play at the time when they were necessary to get around.

I asked several players at the docks if there was any risk of being boarded by pirates while en route.

I also jumped off the boat near sisters isle thinking it would keep going by and if I wanted to see the island I had to swim for it. Wish I had known about that plague shark. My second lost corpse in game ... fortunately tattered leather armor was relatively easy to come by.

I was around before Kunark came out, and it is a huge leap from just the original EQ, but in the scheme of things, it's one of my least favorite expansions like I said. I just never really enjoyed that many of the zones in it.. one of the best zones was Field of Bone, day of Kunark release, me and 1000 other iksar monks =-p It rates overall low for me, in comparision to all expansions, but it was a great expansion.

I find it interesting that people either rate LDoN as one of hte highest or one of the lowest. To me that is the sign of a well targeted expansion. It was designed for casual players, who typically love it, and not designed for raiders who typically hate it. So it seems to me that it hit its mark *comfort raides*


Agreed. My son groups almost exclusively, and was a level 35ish wizard when LDoN came out. He got a lot of groups, xp, and loot from that expansion. For me though, an expansion with zero solo content has zero value.

To each his own.

Vestix
61 druid of Tunare

Hmm...
I don't know that I fully agree with the logic of it. I was a time restricted raid player. I was in a raid guild, and yes that took a lot of my time. But I tended to put in a substantial portion of my play time at odd hours so it was like half of my play time I was a raid player and half of my play time I was casual (pick up groups, solo, etc).

I never saw LDON as anything but an experience expansion and I had no problems with that concept.

What bothered me about it was that it just felt mass produced compared to other expansions. Some of the zone versions looked nice enough, but the overall play experience seemed repetitive and arbitrary to me.

My LDON grouping was about 50% pickup, 50% guild groups. It just didn't excite me as much as I had hoped it would. It didn't help that every run people wanted to do "kill x of mob y" since it was easiest.

My ratings for expansions (most to least favorite):

Vellious
PoP
Luclin
Kunark
LDoN
LoY (maybe tied with LDoN)
GoD

I had a lot of fun exploring vellious, and still go back there just to play around in favorite places. Lots of different types of zones, interesting and varied mobs, and things to do for a wide range of people. Oh and I like snow, so of course I like Vellious :)

I have fun in PoP and enjoy raiding so it's a close second for me. Still quite a bit of it I haven't seen and maybe won't, not sure (nearing elemental access but not quite there yet). Also liked the AA's added here (SoTW, etc).

There are quite a few luclin zones I dont like, but I've had lots of fun in the Grey, Tenebrous Vamp castle, the Deep, Akheva, and a few other places. All-in-all a big expansion with lots to explore and good variety.

Kunark has a few zones I really like or liked, and again some that I wonder if anyone likes (Skyfire, EJ? ick). Good expansion where I also had lots of fun. High diving off the lizard statue outside of FV will always be a highlight (and yes you have to drop lev hehe).

LDoN is nice in theory and fun sometimes. I like the get on, get in, have an adventure and get out part of it. In theory because sometimes it takes more time to find the people for the adventure than I have to play. The MM theme is my favorite, but in general I find LDoN gets a bit too repetitive.

LoY I mostly like for my Drogmor, my frog, and the armor dyes. Had fun in some of the zones but have not spent a lot of time there. Not my favorite zones I guess.

GoD I haven't seen all that much of yet (5 zones I think). Tried to get into an instance GoD zone but we didn't have the correct "reason" so not tried those yet. From what I've seen though I am not impressed. Repetitive/boring so far, with few interesting tactics at least in general. It's like fighting at Orc1 if everything hit for 500-1000 or so (and still never dropped any good loot, unless you found a named or did some huge event). Yes, it's hard but it just isn't all that much fun. Reminds me of LDoN hard that never ends and has no adventure points. As mentioned I haven't seen it all so I'm trying to give it a chance still.

Heh, I hated Skyfire. I dislike all those "lava" type zones. What really ruined it for me was that stupid red dragon (forget his name)... back in the day when he'd aggro from his spawn point all the way back to the BW zone in.

Hmmm hard to call. I have a love/hate relationship with too many of them.

POP: Love the elementals/1 Groups able content. Hate artificially imposed limits on #flags, and #in time raid.

Ldon: I love the challenge of hards. And the fact that I love to pull and tank in normal.

Luclin: farming here made me a fortune. Loved large number of loots that was VT on a run. Hated the bottleneck format.

Velios: Dragons!

Kunark: Bah.

Yeskha: well at least they gave me bank slots, maps, and guild tool.

Hmm...

- Kunark: This expansion really did a lot to add onto the most needed areas of EverQuest. It had a great feel and a lot of lore, and it didn't really feel like it was a seperate expansion since it tied in so well to the existing areas.

- Velious: I always loved how it felt running around Velious. They did a great job making this continent feel like it was a frozen wasteland. I still think Thurgadin is one of the best cities in the game. It also still hosts one of the best quests (ring/shawls). As an Enchanter, I have to dock a lot of points for how useless it made my class and the fact that a lot of content was unfinished or poorly implemented. I always hoped they'd do more to flesh out the dragon vs. giant factions.

- Luclin: Grossly unfinished, but Luclin really did a lot to technologically improve the game. It also added the Beastlord class which is the only other class I've enjoyed enough to level past 25. The zones look great, especally Seru and Katta. I still have fond memories about fighting in a lot of these zones. Still, the amount of problems that came with Luclin and unfinished content/lore is unexcusable. I can only imagine that Luclin would've been an amazing expansion had they taken the time to finish it.

- LDoN: Someone else put it best, "I don't hate LDoN for what it is, but for what it could've been." A lot of great dynamics and lore in this expansion, but it just seemed to me like they took the easy route and cut so many corners when trying to make this expansion. They added almost 50 zones and you can barely tell them apart. Also, the lack of types of missions there were to do always disappointed me.

- PoP: Ironically it's probably the expansion I've spent the most time in. However, the flag system frustrated me to no end. I had a hell of a time keeping up with my guild since I couldn't always play primetime hours, and just felt like I kept falling further and further behind. Also, in the mindset of what I said about LDoN, the zones were a lot less dynamic than I expected after Luclin and really didn't have the same threatening and foreboding feeling that PoH and PoF had which I really came to expect from the planes. This is probably the expansion that most watered down the game too.

- LoY (if it counts): "Hey look, we found a new way to trick people into paying us more money!" - A lot of nice stuff came from LoY (froglok race, map tool, tradeskill recipes, spells, etc.), but this was never an expansion that we should've had to pay for. They just lumped together a bunch of stuff we usually get free over time and made us pay a huge fee for it. I think the zones in LoY look great, but the entire expansion just felt like it was hugely lacking.

:) I seem to be the only purist here: My alltime favourite was Classic EQ, with no expansion what so ever and PoFear, PoHate and PoSky being the most ubererest zones of em all *sigh* good old days

Kunkark ranks next for me, very good and tight storyline, had something for everyone, more dragons :), epic weapons, really nice dungeons, new race

then there's a looooooong pause with nothing :-p

After that Velious and it's still somewhat good storyline, the 3 factions and the tradeskill quests ... though at that time I was wondering how much more the people of Norrath had already lost (I mean ... losing 1 continent, ok... but 2? Oh and having it found by GNOMES ?! Now waidaminute!!)

Luclin ranks in next, new race, new class, new character models (though I miss my old hobbit model :( ), mounts, bazaar ... but too many time sinks to rank higher... also the lag ... the laaaaag ... (did you realize the people of Norrath managed to blow a fsking piece of their world out into space and have it land on the moon, have hundreds and hundreds of people go on an exodus to the same moon, have a once HUGe empire vanish all of a sudden and the relics of it even standing as a freaking reminder of it ... and they kinda forgot for quite a while all that happened?)

Ykesha ranks next, some really good ideas, really nice designed zones, interesting quests, but the storyline got worse and worse (though that already started somewhat with Luclin and got terrible with PoP), the idea of the quested spells is nice, the ingame maps that hardly anyone mentioned are a real nice plus as well, also you could get some really dandy gear even in the lower levels (notice: nothing was lost here ... just noone seemed to care about the pirate islands until the trolls were driven away from Grobb)

After that I'd rank LDoN ... the concept is quite ok, though it bores me to hell and back. I can barely do 2 adventures in a row without getting tired of it again ... even exp grinding is more entertaining for me (Weee, we lost something AGAIN, though this time it's only a few dungeons ... not that the elfs might have tried to find out what happened to their former capital after the war of the gods had ended and peace was found with the other races or the frogloks that lived in Guk for ages realized that something was behind that decorative gobelin ...)

Then a loooooooong pause again

and finally and the worst of em all: Fsking PoP: I HATE HATE HATE the new transportation system. Now had they made PoKnowledge like EVERY other plane in this "§$)="§ game (even the PoTranquility mind you!) and made it 46+ then it'd have been a good idea ... "You earned yourself after a life of adventures and dangers to expand your knowledge, enjoy the safety of New Tanaan, the comfortable book system and the trade skill heaven, welcome!" ... but no, we want to make a "high level raid expansion" but need to put SOMETHING in it so that everyone has to buy it ... storyline was terrible and at some points ridiculous, elemental planes and time were not finished for AGES, encounters had to be tweaked and tuned over and over ... GOD it was by far the worst expansion ...

And then we have GoD (so far unrated, as it's being patched for the German server while I'm typing this)... though it strikes me that AGAIN the Norrathians managed to lose a continent ... the 3rd one ... now originally EQ had 3 continents ... basically 55% of Norrath were lost and then found again (the 5% being the dungeons :-p) Maybe it's just me, but SOE could come up with something new other than "lost" ... *shrug* make it an "underwater culture that due to a volcano had it's land moved to the surface of the ocean... i dunno, just don't let the Norrathians lose their continents like I lose my bus tickets!

Over all I was happiest before ANY expansion was released ... off course back then we still had to walk 10 miles to our exp zones ... through windy plains, kneehigh snow, barefeet and with a sack of concrete under each arm ... :)

I suspect he is trying to get at the idea that it was scary to go to fear or hate, even with a lot of your closest buddies.

PON didn't have that. Good atmosphere, but not that feeling you got on a fear or Hate break back in the day.

1. Velious - Simply the best thing that ever happened to EQ. Fun isn't even the word.

2. PoP - Level 65!!!! And loot that FOREVER Changed the game. It will NEVER be the same. However, this addon would draw a line in the sand, vs raider and casual players.

(2 1/2) GOD - Well so far, I like it alot. However, I see it being another LDoN after while, but it's still early. But a very good starting score.

3. LDoN - This saved EQ somewhat. It gave something back, EQ was lacking for a longtime. FUN! Mindless fun, that lasted about 1 week. It was fun while it lasted.

4. Luclin - Wtf, mobs with 6 million hps. How do we beat them?! Get me 20 clerics and a warrior and it will fall! Cute. VT key! Wow what smart person made that up. Cause guilds to fight for key spawns. Oh and the EMP spawn! bah.

5. Ykesha - SAD, SAD. I mean C'mon.

6. Kunark - Level 60! Interesting ideas for the time period, however the start of real hell levels. Honestly boring, after 30 hours of play. You still played because you wanted 60. Though it took a year and a day to get there.

1. Kunark

2. Velious

Then PoP/SoL, LDoN, LoY although non of these are even near the feeling
you get in velious and kunark, instead they have this massproduced feeling.

Yeah, Nightmare is the exception to what I said.